New ideas 116

I want to be surrounded by old photos of people that I’ve never met. I don’t want the people I care for to have pasts. I don’t want people I’m in love with to have cried before I knew them – I don’t want the people I love to have ever needed me when I wasn’t there. Loving isn’t selfish, I don’t think, unless being selfish is pure or something.

“I had this thing –”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Your face.” Your face///
“You had my face? You’re so ruined.”
L/a/u/g/h/s
“No.”
“What are you talking about?”/those words a hundred times at once.
“My face?”
“Yeah.”
“Start again.”
“Yeah.”
“OK.”
“I had this thing about your face.”
“Haha – ” splinters somewhere.
“I kept thinking you and Luke had changed faces.”

Stops. Think about whether I said it or not. Feel shivers. They’re from the cold, they’re nothing to do with what I can’t remember I said.